About Me

Feroz Ali is the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) Chair on Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras. He teaches intellectual property laws and business laws. He is the author of three books on patent law.
He is a practicing advocate at the Madras High Court. He litigates and counsels in intellectual property law, corporate law and competition law but his primary focus has remained in patent law. He has appeared before the Supreme Court, the High Courts, Intellectual Property Appellate Board and the Patent Offices and represented clients including Blue Dart Aviation, Kasturi and Sons Ltd (Publishers of The Hindu newspaper), Mylan Inc, TVS Motor Company Ltd and Yahoo! Inc.

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27 February 2008

Book Updates

Since the publication of this book, there have been some significant developments which need to be incorporated into the book. While the book is being received well, both in legal as well as industrial circles, and may as well see a new edition this year, it will not be appropriate to hold back all these developments till the next edition. One of the purpose behind this blog was to provide timely updates without any additional cost to the readers. As proposed, I shall be posting updates citing the relevant paragraph numbers from the book.

If the update, say a case law or a statutory or policy development, forms a part of an existing paragraph from the book, it would simply carry the said paragraph number along with the updated passage.

Here's a sample:

20.42An application for rejection of plaint is a preliminary objection which may be made on any one of the above grounds. In ascertaining whether the plaint discloses a cause of action, the court will assume that the averments made in the plaint are true as the court is not required to make an elaborate enquiry into doubtful and complicated questions of law and fact.Eureka Forbes Ltd v Hindustan Lever Ltd In (MANU/DE/0198/2008), the Division Bench of the Delhi High Court refused to entertain an appeal from the order of the single judge rejecting an application under O 7, r 11 for rejection of plaint in a suit for infringement of a patent on the ground that the plaint disclosed the cause of action and raised issues of fact and law of considerable importance that had to be adjudicated upon by the court.

If the update, forms a new paragraph in the next edition of the book, it will be denoted by a number (the preceding paragraph number in the present edition) and an alphabet (a,b,c etc) to show the order of addition in the next edition.

Here's a sample of that:

Opinion of court in Interim proceedings

20.98aThe court must refrain from expressing any opinion on the merits of the case at the interim stage. The opinion expressed by the court on different aspects touching the merits of the cases shall not be treated as the expression of a final opinion on those aspects which the court shall be free to determine at the conclusion of the trial (Eureka Forbes Ltd v Hindustan Lever Ltd (MANU/DE/0198/2008).

I must add a rider that as the updates will be provided as and when they happen, they may not figure in the next edition in the manner in which they are posted in this blog. I will be glad to hear from you on any matter that can improve this book.